Microbear

Series

Series Name

Living Tomorrow

Issue

Issue No.

259

Date Released

1980

Length of issue (in feet)

520

Stories in this Issue:

1. 1Microbear

Story

Story No. within this Issue

1 / 1

Summary

COI synopsis: Congenital deafness not only means you can’t hear other people: it effectively takes from you the power of speech. It doesn’t hit once, but twice. Without speech, you’re incapable of complex thought, you’re condemned to a limited life. Without speech, without hearing, you’re without grammar too: not once, not twice but three times hit. You’re a misfit and a loser. Teaching grammar to congenitally deaf children has been until recently, a thankless struggle, demanding great dedication from teachers. Results on the other hand have been less rewarding. Now teachers of deaf children have called in computer experts. Between them, they have developed a computer exercise. It sets the children the task of re-organising jumbled words and phrases into a coherent sentence. It’s a programme that relates language to the children’s own experience. It’s impersonal, yet it offers warm praise when the children get things right. It can be rewritten to test an individual’s understanding of verbs or prepositions. And whereas concentration in the classroom rarely extends longer than three minutes, the children, in solitude, will struggle with the computer for half an hour or more. Already, after only eighteen months of tests, results are encouraging. The lives of congenitally deaf children are slowly being extended.

Keywords

Education and training; Children; Science and technology; Disabled persons; Computers and computing

Written sources

COI Microfilm Roll 55 [BFI National Archive]   Used for synopsis

COI Reference

MI 1458/259

Credits:

Sponsor

Central Office of Information (COI)

Sponsor

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Cutter

Fred Goodland

This series is held by:

Film Archive

Name

British Film Institute (BFI)

Email

For BFI National Archive enquiries:
nonfictioncurators@bfi.org.uk
For commercial/footage reuse enquiries:
footage.films@bfi.org.uk

Web

http://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web

Phone

020 7255 1444

Fax

020 7580 7503

Address

21 Stephen Street
London W1T 1LN

Notes

The BFI National Archive also preserves the original nitrate film copies of British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Empire News Bulletin, Gaumont British News, Gaumont Graphic, Gaumont Sound News and Universal News (the World War II years are covered by the Imperial War Museum).

Series held

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